On reading, twerking, and consensual perversity

Notes on books, performance, and our extremely online lives

What you're about to read was originally meant to be two to three posts at the time, but then I read a post by

Tom Cox

post and things unraveled. Time and space collapsed upon each other and all the posts I had planned became one. What follows is three posts in one—a weird chimera that's probably an abomination.

Why Don't We Read Like We Used To?

Tom's post is about why people don't read anymore. It's a brilliant post about a topic I've been thinking of writing about for a long time. If you've been reading my blog—who am I kidding? I know nobody reads this shit—you know this was the theme of my previous post post as well.

But Tom writes it in a beautiful and thought-provoking way. If you read his post and then mine, you'll know the difference between a writer and a moron on the internet with a blog.

Tom starts the post by reflecting on how he read more during his recent bout with COVID than at any point in the previous years. Coincidentally, the previous time he had read a lot was also during season one of COVID. Remember that bad one that was supposed to kill us all but turned out to be a mega fucking disappointment? I mean, the number of people who should've died but didn't because of the sheer incompetence of that overhyped virus is...

I used to joke, gesturing towards the hundreds of unread books on my shelves, about the lengthy disease I had planned for the future which would finally permit me to rip through them. Maybe there was more truth to that than I realised: the last time before now that I crammed as much reading into the same short space of time was during my previous tussle with Covid, almost precisely two years ago. When my body is not so violently at war with itself, it is similarly rare for me to be without a book in my hand, but I go around with a permanent feeling that I could, and should, be reading more. Part of this is the work of my own personal reading demon: I am unable to ever quite convince myself that I am not still 20-year-old me, fresh from an extremely unliterary, sporty adolescence, newly, voluntarily plunged into a world of words - populated by people who knew what a formidable number of them meant - and feeling a severe need to play catch-up in order not to be “found out”. But there are wider cultural factors at play, too. Paradoxically, those factors make me miss that ill-educated 20-year-old, or at least a precious commodity he possessed: space.

I related to this. If you want to read more, being sick is the best thing that can happen to you. A few months ago, Shingles knocked me down, and I polished off a huge Ken Follett novel that was big enough to be used as a murder weapon.

The page count of that novel exceeded everything I had read in the previous year. I could read it quickly only because I was sick. I know it sounds morose, but I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy. I could've probably died, but I'd at least die knowing what happened to the maid who slept with the rich landlord in the novel.

That's a good death.

The other part of Tom's post that made me want to stand up and scream "amen" and "preach brother, preach" was this:

“I just don’t get the time these days,” many people have said to me lately, on the subject of reading books. But what is sapping that time? Is it childcare, demanding and exhausting careers? Definitely, in many cases. But more likely it is the general fast spin cycle of culture, a vastly effective illusion of urgency and bustle that now reaches far beyond social media into every crevice of our lives. We have, somehow, somewhere along the line, been conned into living at triple speed. A security code is sent to the phone you have misplaced somewhere in the house and such a tense countdown begins, as you search under cushions and tables, an observer from the not too distant past could be forgiven for thinking you were defusing a bomb, rather than just, say, trying to log into the government website to check your tax bill. It’s now de rigeur for documentaries to show a lightning-fast jump-cut montage of their coming selves in their opening seconds, so aware are they of how pushed for time and spoilt for choice their potential viewers are.

The Netflix menu now feels like having a thousand baby’s heads all bawling at you at the same time. Frustrated with the sedate pace of your audiobook? That’s ok: they can speed it up for you now. Our text message and WhatsApp culture demands that each message is replied to instantly (“Don’t leave me on read”), yet almost nobody can ever find the time to meet up because everyone is “too busy”. But with what? With the simple act of being a person, padlocked to 2024 and all its attendant noise. Stepping off this bullet train takes strength and discipline - perhaps even more than it did last decade during the peak years of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Switching all of it off and reading a book, a real one, made out of paper and everything, becomes an act of radical, world-slowing defiance.

Don't worry, I won't bitch and moan about social media, smartphones, and reels rotting our brains. I've done plenty of that. But at the very least, you have to admit that all the screens, apps, and internet-y things haven't been the unalloyed good they were touted to be. I'd go so far as to say they represent a Faustian bargain.

In one way or another, knowingly or unknowingly, with or without malice, all the products and services that thrive on us being constantly online and plugged in exploit our deep-rooted evolutionary traits. They titillate, caress, and molest our hardwired behaviors and tendencies like hope, fear, greed, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and more.

Given how these products and services arouse addictive tendencies in us, resisting their lure becomes increasingly difficult. Whether you analyze the online economy through moral judgments about its ethics, value judgments about its merits, or plain facts about how it exploits innate human behaviors doesn't change this fundamental truth.

Speaking of our online lives, I can’t not mention Byung-Chul Han’s terrifying yet apt metaphor:

Smartphones represent digital devotion — indeed, they are the devotional objects of the Digital, period. As a subjectivation-apparatus, the smartphone works like a rosary — which, because of its ready availability, represents a handheld device too. Both the smartphone and the rosary serve the purpose of self-monitoring and control. Power operates more effectively when it delegates surveillance to discrete individuals. Like is the digital Amen. When we click Like, we are bowing down to the order of domination. The smartphone is not just an effective surveillance apparatus; it is also a mobile confessional. Facebook is the church — the global synagogue (literally, ‘assembly’) of the Digital.

And that last line in Tom's paragraph that I quoted "becomes an act of radical, world-slowing defiance" is such a banger as the youts would say. I wrote something similar recently:

We no longer read books; we read summaries. We no longer watch videos; we watch shorts. We no longer read long-form articles; we click the TLDR button. We no longer go looking for things; we ask an LLM. The default meal on the menu is slop, and people have gotten so used to eating it that they think that's all there is. They don't know that there's Puliyogare and Vangi Bath waiting for them out there.

Today, to reject the slop and go out of one's way to find something interesting feels like a revolutionary act.

I think the movie Matrix is a good metaphor for our extremely online lives. In a way, we are like the people deep asleep in those slimy pods, jacked into the matrix. We've all become so addicted to the inducements and enticements of the matrix that we've lost touch with the real. We've replaced the meaningful with the banal.

Being online is like consuming opiates. The online world is an easy escape from real life. Whether you are feeling bored, unhappy, heartbroken, insecure, lost, or have to confront something, the matrix offers a convenient escape.

Feeling bored? You can just swipe it away. Feeling insecure? Just fill up your shopping cart with the cheap shiny shit and you also get 10% off! No insecurities anymore and also a 10% off—that's a fantastic fucking deal! Don't want to deal with heartbreak? You can get an AI girlfriend that will never disappoint you. You'll never have to deal with the pains and pleasures of real life.

The only way out of the matrix is to take the red pill but unlike the movie, no one is looking for us to give it to us. We're on our own.

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Which brings me to the first post I had planned to write, tentatively titled "We're All Consensual Perverts."

We are all consensual perverts

When it comes to our online lives, in a loose sense, we're all voyeurs and perverts in one form or another—myself included.

pervert (plural perverts)

1. (dated) One who has been perverted; one who has turned to error; one who has turned to a twisted sense of values or morals.

2. A person whose sexual habits are not considered acceptable.

voyeur (plural voyeurs)

1. A person who derives sexual pleasure from observing other people engaging in some intimate or sexual activity; one who engages in voyeurism. synonyms 

2. An obsessive observer of sensational or sordid subjects.

Think about it for a second. If you are online, whether on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, you're not scrolling—you are gawking and gaping and ogling at people. We're all peeping toms and we do this for hours and hours every day. The only difference is people online consent to being gawked at by sharing things.

So aren't we all consensual perverts and voyeurs?

Take a step back and think about social media platforms for a second. We share our most intimate, vulnerable, happy, and sad moments for the entire world to gawk at. The fact that these platforms have been able to get the entire world to undress in front of each other, so to speak, is nuts.

What are we getting for stripping naked?

Nothing.

At least on OnlyFans, you actually get paid. All we get is a few likes or retweets or whatever the fuck else they're called. Isn't that stunning?

The fact that black t-shirt wearing dudes in a distant land can get the entire world to bare their souls is mind-boggling. This is how dangerous and weak that primitive brain of ours is.

Nothing is private anymore

Also, nothing is private anymore. I don't think we even know the meaning of the word. For millions of extremely online people, the line between public and private has not only blurred but vanished. Some people design and live their lives to be as photogenic, broadcastable, and engagement-worthy as possible—the Kardashianification of regular people.

This reminds me of Goodhart’s law:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

People constantly live their lives trying to manufacture the next thing to share online. You might have read about influencers ruining tourist spots [1, 2]. This is what you get when the goal of travel is not leisure but likes. Now replace travel with all the other things we do and the result is the same. We're not living anymore, we're broadcasting.

We've also lost touch with our private selves. We no longer learn, do, and make things just for the joy of it. If something is not shareworthy, there's no point in doing it. We desperately want people to know that we did something and give it a like.

People used to have ambitious personal projects like learning an instrument, pottery, building a rocket, painting, writing, dancing, or scuba diving. Not anymore. Think about the last time you attempted something hard and ambitious because you wanted to. Now, we only do it if it's shareable.

Put another way, everything has become performative.

We're like—me included—metaphorical strippers twerking for likes, shares, attention, and validation. We also don't realize that all this twerking is a race to the bottom. As more twerkers clamor for attention, the twerking has to become more exotic. The regular kind of twerking doesn't cut it anymore.

This weird tunnel vision has sucked the fun out of a lot of things. The result is we're drowning in an ocean full of formulaic, plastic, anodyne, and performative bullshit. It's just slop as far as the eye can see.

Why do we perform?

Well, in my experience, I don't think most people even think about all this. It's just a thing they do because everyone else is doing it. But for many of us, this is how we try to fill whatever deep dark hole we have in us—and we all do.

We humans don't understand moderation. The pendulum of this extremely online era has swung too far in one direction. I don't know when, but it will—it has to—swing the other way. The more we all think that things will remain the same, the more time and history sucker punch us in the metaphorical nuts.

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The second post I had planned was a simple one about why we should read in the first place. I thought about it as I sat down with my hot cup of delicious filter coffee and started reading Tom’s post.

Why read?

I'm not going to write a post praising the endless virtues of reading widely because there are countless of those. This blog is about me and me only. So instead, I'm going to subject you to my narcissism and share why I try to read as much as I can.

You may be tempted to ask why you should read a post about why I read. It's a good question. So ask yourself this: What would your miserable life be like if not for all the sticky wisdom I ooze and drip over this blog?

For reasons unknown to me, I've always enjoyed reading. It never felt like the effort that it feels like for a lot of people. It's always been fun. But I'll also be honest and admit that until recently, I hadn't even considered why I tried to read in the first place. Of course, I had all the same clichéd reasons that most people do—like wanting to be smart and learn new things—but I hadn't thought deeply about it.

But against the advice of my brain, I put it to use and pondered for a moment about why I read in the first place, and here's what my brain came up with. So I'm gonna start oozing my opinion now.

A little less dumb

Reading is the easiest way to be a little less dumb in life. I've always liked this Charlie Munger quote:

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”

Similar to this quote, I'm making an inversion. It's easier to become less dumb than to become much smarter. And for people with no great skills or smarts or the endowment of a genetic lottery, it's much easier to be less stupid than a whole lot smarter. This has been a core part of my life philosophy for some years now.

I think of life like walking through a thick and dense fog with very little visibility. The only way to clear the fog and see a little ahead is to be a little less dumb. Notice how I didn't use words like smart and wise.

Looking at your miserable human self

Reading often feels like looking at yourself in the mirror. We look at our reflection through the words of others. There can be times when you don't like the reflection. That's what good books can do. They can show the sides of ourselves that we've been hiding from ourselves and the world.

Often, we won't enjoy these hidden reflections and they can be jarring. But by forcing us to reckon with our inner demons, good books and writing give us an opportunity to be a little better today than we were yesterday.

Good books and articles are also really good at ripping apart the metaphorical blinders and shattering our comfortable delusions. I'm not exaggerating when I say this, but one of the most painful decisions I took this year was because of a gut punch from a really good book that I'm still reading. It gave me that final push I needed.

You’re not special

One of the most wonderful qualities about good books and writing is that they can ground you and make you feel small. It's the easiest thing for us flawed humans to get lost in our own thoughts and forget that we are but one among billions on an insignificant little rock in the backwaters of this galaxy, which is but one among countless others.

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” ― Carl Sagan

It's also easy for us to wallow in our endless thoughts and mental filth and be arrogant enough to think that what we are going through is unique. But books are really good at showing us that we ain't seen shit. They make us realize how good we have it compared to others.

I had read this quote by James Baldwin and had forgotten about it. But someone shared it recently and I've been thinking about it because this has been an absolutely miserable fucking year for me. It's just been fucking horrendous all around.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ― James Baldwin

I asked ChatGPT if other people have said something similar and it gave me this pithy banger:

“We read to know we are not alone.” ― C.S. Lewis

Portals

Perhaps the quality that I admire most about books is that they help you time travel. You can explore distant lands, talk to strange people, dance among the stars, celebrate with the fortunate, and feel the pain of the bereaved.

Replace dreams with books in this quote and that perfectly encapsulates their magic:

“For in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let them swim in the deepest ocean, or glide over the highest cloud.” ―Albus Dumbledore J.K. Rowling

Books are the cheapest form of time travel.

Spread the word

You also read to share, and I think that's a noble thing to do. Now, this might sound contradictory to what I wrote above about this constant need to "perform online." You might ask if reading for the sake of sharing isn't the same thing.

No, that's not what I'm saying.

When you read something good, you feel an uncontrollable urge to talk about and share the book with others. The fact that you can share a book with others and get them to read something that might change them is one of the kindest things you can do for anyone.

Striving to live a life where you share whatever you can and as much as you can without any expectation, to me, is at the heart of what it means to live a good life. What better way to share than to give someone a good book and send them on a delightful journey into strange little worlds?

This entire post is the result of sharing.

I try to write one post every Saturday. It's a way for me to force myself to learn something new. Now, today is Saturday and I woke up without knowing what to write. I had multiple ideas but none of them were fully formed. So I got up and headed straight to my regular coffee shop. This has been my morning ritual for well over a decade now.

I get a cup of hot filter coffee, sit on the curb overlooking the main road and try not to scroll aimlessly—often unsuccessfully—on my phone.

Today, I figured I'd get through some of the things I had saved to read later on the Substack app and Tom's post was right at the top. I'm not gonna lie, it took me more than 40 minutes to read the post because I constantly kept checking Twitter, LinkedIn, email etc., but I read the post and re-read many parts because they were so good.

By the time I got to the middle of the post, I got the idea to write this post. I immediately realized that the other post I had planned was connected to this and then decided to combine both posts into the unholy mess that this is.

This is what words can do.

They can set your mind racing in twenty different directions and cause this deep urge to talk about and share them with others.

Whenever I discover someone interesting, I go down their rabbit holes by reading their books, blogs, and watching their videos. I started watching this interview of Tom and it's delightful.

I also ordered a few of his books and can’t wait to read em. I’ll share more when I finish reading.

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That’s it for today.

What did you think?